i would never think a country like britain would fall victim to this sort of censorial nonsense, and it is a troubling development

however, i don't buy the argument it is because of feminism

you need to understand that feminism there is the older valid causes against the maltreatment of women and the removal of their rights. which used to be far worse in the west. and is indeed still a major problem in the world, especially in areas like india and islamic countries

but the kind of feminism you seem to be reacting to isn't really feminism at all, it is instead this sort of clueless teenaged reactive naval gazing by immature clowns

kind of like how dismantling all governmental protections against abuses by large market players is called "libertarianism" in the usa. while actual genuine libertarianism of the original european sort has to do with social issues. real valid libertarians are interested in legalizing marijuana, not freeing plutocrats from paying their fair share of taxes

so like the word "libertarian" in the usa has been hijacked corrupted and rendered invalid by a plutocrat agenda, so to have a few headcases coopted the word "feminist" and advanced truly nutty causes that only mark the believer in those causes as having some sort of psychological or social deficiency

furthermore, for you to react to these fringe idiots, and believe what they stand for is actual feminism, just means you have been horribly trolled. snap out of it, you've been fooled

real, valid feminism is a very important ideology in this world, against the very real and very evil treatment of women in many parts of this world

thank you, that's a valid clarification

i am aware some countries outlaw fantasy cartoon child porn as well as actual real child porn

while real child porn should never be legal and should always be blocked, i think that fantasy drawings and cartoons do have valid cathartic use and should be legal

also, the legal status quo against fantasy content precludes the tactic of honey pots

outlawing the fantasy content drives it underground, while allowing it to flow freely allows the authorities to track profile, and locate consumers of it

as they should

because viewing this material indicates a proclivity that allows us to find pedophiles

and pedophiles should never be able to exist in open society without monitoring

like drug addiction, we should not incarcerate pedophiles, we should treat them as having a healthcare issue. pedophiles, once identified, should be treated, not jailed

and closely watched nonetheless

because like how valid porn between consenting adults does not prevent all rape, only minimize it, fantasy child porn would also only mitigate child abduction and victimization, not prevent all of it

being a pedophile marks you as fundamentally incompatible with human society in a truly horrible way. i feel sorry for pedophiles, i'd rather have painful cancer than be a pedophile, it is a truly life destroying, life hobbling vile affliction

because to be a pedophile means you have a sexual proclivity which immediately elicits the completely valid parental response and societal response to protect their children. some of that instinct outside the realm of law will find immediate and violent impulse, and even large sympathy for that violent impulse. the imperative to protect children is strong, as it should be, and pedophilia is a valid threat. but even in the realm of legality, society has to strongly consider the potential for grave harm that a pedophile represents in open society. a pedophile is truly screwed in many ways, and there is little empathy for them

pedophilia, like homosexuality, is merely a genetic aberration in the formation of sexual attraction. but while homosexuality is fine because it involves consenting adults, pedophilia will never be ok because it involves one party that can never consent (in an informed way, not a bullshit "i gave you toys and candy and you said 'ok' to my suggestion of sex" because a child can never give informed consent on the topic)

i think maybe in the future we can treat pedophilia with child shaped robots

but even so, treatment will never prevent all pedophiles from hurting real children. and therefore society must always view them in a very critical, suspicious, dim light. because they always represent the potential for grave harm

i think if i were a pedophile i'd choose self-banishment to greenland or something. having a strong sense of morality is only a guide, not a cloak of protection, we all have moments of weakness, and i would never want a moment of weakness of mine to result in harm to a child

truly a life-crippling, monstrous affliction

No, it just shows your lack of reading comprehension. Go back and find any mention in my posts of morality. It's OK. I'll wait.

agreed 100%

you have no principles or morality in your "thinking" on the topic. that's the actual point

you have mindless contrarianism where one person can do something evil because somebody else did. and then blame that evil action on someone else anyways, due to your lack of understanding of the concept of accountability

you demonstrate your own personal failures of character rather than any valid commentary on geopolitics. you are projecting choices and consequences as understood by your own dim wattage mind:

1. "somebody did something bad so i should be able to do something bad"

two-wrongs-make-a-right logic

2. "the reason i did something bad is because of what someone else did that does not actually logically imply my action, but whatever"

wife beater logic

your arguments depend upon this "thinking", therefore you mark yourself as an immoral and irresponsible douchebag

i actually feel sorry for anyone who has to work with you or is related to you/ friends with you. you're obviously a horrible piece of shit in the way you think about what is justified or not in this world according to #1 and #2 above

here's some bullshit arguments similar to yours:

"if we legalize marijuana, that means we have to legalize heroin and meth"

"if we legalize gay marriage, that means we have to legalize marrying corpses or animals"

see the problem? people actually think in your world. and they can tell the difference between different topics. we don't slide effortlessly into lack of thought on major issues of liberty and rights. no one does. your argument is illogical FUD

simply having the tool or liberty to do one thing, does not automatically mean that using that tool or liberty in all cases is therefore legitimized or inevitable or even more likely

because people can tell the difference between different topics. we think. we're not blind

the very concept of the slippery slope is a logical fallacy that instantly marks the argument as invalid. it is used to make fear-based demagogue arguments

this doesn't mean i support blocking porn websites, it simply means that the act of blocking websites: phishing sites, child porn sites, etc., does not in any way have anything to do with restricting websites that have genuine free expression use that the govt may not like. to block those, the govt has to actually do that, and therefore is doing something new and different and not in any way related to blocking sites that really do need to be blocked (child porn, phishing, etc.)

you have to remove the thinking human being from the equation to make your bullshit argument work. or do you believe blocking websites requires some vast infrastructure that would not be viable nor exist if we didn't block child porn first? nonsense

you can say having a police dept is a slippery slope to martial law. except there is no actual slippery slope because people can actually tell the difference between different concepts of use for a police dept. as recent controversies in the usa demonstrate. and in fact without a police dept, society quickly succumbs to chaos

think

invoking the concept of the slippery slope removes you from the land of logic and reason and places you firmly in the land of fear based emotion

more socially conservative societies that restrict outlets for harmless sexual release do indeed have higher rates of rape and sexual violence in general. there is much truth to the concept of catharsis as a way to reduce rape and sexual violence. it doesn't prevent everything, just some of it

but bringing up child porn in this context is a red herring because the creation of child porn victimizes actual children, and this is why it is genuinely immoral illegal and verboten

sexual content between consenting adults is completely unrelated to child porn. to believe it is marks you as woefully inadequate to comment intelligently on the topic, or a failed troll

how socially clueless and sheltered can someone be?

you have asperger's maybe?

there's some sort of large social deficit at work here resulting in spouting this nonsense

red and blue values were swapping places across thousands of pixels

Just convince the customers that "the Avatar look" is in style. Who needs technicians when you have a good sales team.

I once contracted with a shop that had a process that generated garbled output data rows. It appeared to be extra stuff that didn't affect (over-write) the intended rows. The shop had added an extra processing step to filter out the garbage rows and eventually just worked around the glitch.

They had asked me to try to track it down, among other projects, because they were newbie programmers. I couldn't figure it out either because it never appeared in my intermediate trace statements. I put a trace (print) statement before every "write" in the program. None of the prints showed the garbage, yet garbage ended up in the output file. Head-scratcher galore. I was supposed to be "the expert", and thus feeling a bit deflated.

On I think the last day of my contract, I was running a test copy of the code with some changes to perform speed tests. I went to try a certain speed tweak, and I suddenly spotted the error: the file handle variable was re-used for another non-handle purpose, something like this:

fhandle = openFileForWrite(fileName);
...
writeToFile(fhandle, someData);
...
fhandle = countX + countY - 7;
...
closeFile(fhandle);

The actual handle name was something like "qhand". But a regular variable, "quantity on hand" ended up "qhand" also, the same name as the file handle.

When it dawned on me what happened, I started screaming like a wildman and the others popped out of their cubicles to see what was going down. They took my coffee away :-)

As far as the link on goofy video game bugs, I remember somebody discovered that if you don't put a game cartridge in all the way, certain characters dance and spin randomly and rapidly in the sky.

It created an Internet meme, and spoofs started appearing all over, typically using stop-motion with live actors. I forgot the nickname of the meme, but I found it hilarious. It took my mind off the handle bug.

cooking my self I can manage a (I hope) tastier alternative for less,...

Sorry, but I really don't get why this is interesting at all

You answered your question in the first word of that quote. Soylent buyers don't want to cook. Many of them don't know how to cook. Few of those are interested in learning. I spoke with a man who literally gets anxiety just walking into a grocery store and seeing all these things he has no idea what to do with.

I think it's nutritionally foolish ("science" has a moderate but incomplete conception of nutrition), and I think with my stomach, but that doesn't mean there's no use case.

I don't blame Google for trying. There are too many variables to say what will work and won't. Social networking is too big of an industry to not bother making a play for. Honda started out a successful motorbike company, and successfully pushed into automobiles even though that industry was full of established players.

However, I do blame Google for forcing their services to be or act like a social networking site, where private info magically showed up elsewhere in unexpected ways. That's just desperation and/or forceful denial in play, ticking off your user base. They forgot "Don't Be Evil". Obsession made them stupid.

I hope Google goes back to what it does well: lots of specialized little services that can OPTIONALLY share info between each other as the user sees fit.

You are using "guilty until proven innocent". And I don't see ABC as particularly left-leaning in general (although these kinds of bias claims are difficult to objectify and often contentious.)

I'll apply Hanlon's Razor as the more likely here.

cut the cables between the two boards [of a TRS-80] and send them separately to avoid getting caught in customs.

Reminds me of the story of Richard Garriott's Sputnik 1. It's an actual spare probe prepared by the Soviets in the 1950's as a backup.

When Russia was having a hard time transitioning away from Soviet rule in the 90's, Soviet space stuff was being auctioned for ridiculously low prices.

Richard snapped up the spare Sputnik for a bargain, and disassembled it to get it past customs. His team unscrewed the metal sphere into two halves and presented them as "new-age salad bowls" to customs officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10...

I'd say they're #2 already... oh wait you meant second place. Never mind...

Anyone able to use a touring complete language in a productive way can learn basic M in a day or two.

Yeah, the hospital I used to work at would take tech school kids and teach them M in six months, and then have a competent programmer. It's not work I wanted to do, but it's a real job. Jesus, hasn't anybody here done assembly?

Using it to the fullest will take longer because one needs to grasp the elegance of the design to realize why constructs commonly seen in other languages seem to be missing in M.

The best thing about a Jim Jones joke is the killer punchline.

Seriously, I did Perl vs. M in the '90's with co-workers. Don't even. It was possibly a good argument in 1981.

M persists because managers are afraid of making big changes and those big changes cost more up front than staying with the existing junk. Also they have a cartelized industry to draw resources from, so cost-competitiveness is not really a factor. Third-world countries are running their medical-records systems on "low-end" modern stacks because that's all they can afford.

The thing that distinguishes G+ is circles, which is actually a terrific idea.

Circles are great for organizing but I started to get weird, stupid, argumentative people on my posts because of the unidirectional nature, so I pretty much used it only for announcements after a while, and kept my microblogging on FB.

It also still took me more than ten seconds from when I hit 'enter' to when I could start to type into G+ and then reading it was awful. Did the person who did Maps 2015 also do G+? Why doesn't Google have a metrics-driven HCI lab to validate its developers' work product?

It seems like Google has lost the ability to develop web apps that users like. That should terrify management. It may be related to their hiring process, though - it narrows the personality types that will work at Google in an extreme way. Their corporate culture is not the same as the world's culture(s), and the impedance mismatch is causing lots of heat. And it may even be that they've positive-feedback-looped themselves into not being able to get out of that trap at this point.